Before I was obsessed with Michael Jackson (2009) and then Josh Groban (2010-2018?) and then Adam Lambert (2019-?), it was Tom Cruise
Strangely, that obsession had been quiet for a long time, until I started following som fan accounts on Instagram. They really had some very triggering posts with videos of Tom -- of people's favorite photos and movie excerpts.
This was a portion of what I wrote
Tom cruise
a burned ember
from an exploding star
rushing, glowing into the universe
somehow provoking an even bigger star to form
when the original explosion(s) were long since faded
I'm not a Swiftie. I've never been to her concerts. I've never streamed her songs. I've seen a few videos from her recent concerts on Youtube. She puts on a good show, with the help of a *lot* of other people. She's very beautiful and remarkable in writing her own songs. Apparently, a large percentage of her fans are children.
She's in the news. She's the woman of the moment. People are very anxious to get her political endorsement or keep her from endorsing someone they don't like. Even tho a large percentage of her fans are children, who presumably cannot vote, she apparently commands a lot of votes -- or people think she does.
So, even tho I'm not a Swiftie, I have started to write to her on X.
Of course, it's unlikely that she will notice that I have written to her -- probably even less likely that she'll notice the #QuixoticQuest which is my ostensible mission on social media.
I notice she's "@taylorswift13." It's weird that this superstar isn't just @taylorswift -- but someone else must have gotten it first, I suppose.
Apparently, Musk is thinking of charging all twitter users. I'm not going to pay. I am, therefore creating a blog with screen shots of all my interchanges with Josh Groban.
I originally joined twitter to follow Josh. He's not on there any more in person. Once upon a time he used to have little conversations with us. That's what I was there for.
If I won't have an account any more, I at least want to save these interchanges.
Of course, the messages I sent him that weren't answered were many, many more, but I shan't screen shot all of them. I suppose they'll all be there forever, searchable somehow.
I wonder if this was all of them, or whether my search was somehow incomplete. I feel like there might have been others
I've been blogging about my Quixotic Quest for the World Anthem for a while. This Quest was based on Michael Jackson's belief, as exemplified by the "Cry" video, that if the world could unite together in singing a single song it would help bring peace.
Here is the blog where I'm trying to organize my thoughts about this Quest
More recently I've been intrigued by the role of YouTube in this process. On YouTube, we see people all over the world singing American songs back to us. It's not always the same song, but it's a kind of international communication.
Now, just recently, some people out of Central Asia have been drawing my attention. One of these was #Dimash. I blogged about going to see him.
His coming here, only 2 years after going on a Chinese TV talent show, and nearly selling out the Barclay Center strikes me as a miracle. He's probably the best singer in history, but he's from Kazakhstan. It seems to me that fifty years ago the likelihood of a singer from Kazakhstan filling an arena in the USA would have been extremely low.
Well, I'm not sure whether Mongolia is considered central or east Asia, but there's a new group out of there as well, The HU. What they bring is a music style that I've never heard before that fuses traditional Mongolian instruments and throat singing with heavy metal influences. The result is the most intriguing and innovative rock band we've heard in a long time.
And what are they singing about? Genghis Khan....
And shortly after I discovered these intriguing videos I learned that they were touring the USA> They performed in Brooklyn, which isn't too far from me, but the time wasn't convenient, which was very frustrating to me. I did find some super cool interviews with these people. Now I'm not finding the interview that I liked best. Maybe I'll add it later, if I can find it again.
There's an interesting disconnect here, between what Genghis Khan means to people outside Mongolia and what that name means inside Mongolia.
Prior to encountering this group, my idea of Genghis Khan was that he was a terrifying imperialist, riding roughshod over most of Eurasia, bringing terror, rape, and pillage wherever he went. I didn't know much about him, really, just this negative impression.
Here, tho, this group is saying that people should return to the wisdom of Genghis Khan. Listening to this message was disturbing to me. These people have these beautiful instruments. They're out in this very spiritual looking desert. They're evoking images of this horrendous period of history -- and yet I'm listening, because the music is so intriguing and the videos are so good.
Obviously, I wasn't the only one intrigued, because, like Dimash, these people are touring the world, not too long after first becoming know on YouTube.
But, listening to them, I think I'm seeing the disconnect. For them, Genghis Khan was a spiritual leader who sought unification, world peace, religious tolerance, and even music.
This all happened a very long time ago, of course. I wasn't there. Were people terrified of the golden hoards merely because they were mysterious foreigners? Did they misinterpret the intentions of the "invaders?" Or, are these modern day Mongolians deluding themselves about their history?
In any case, these Mongolians *are* taking over the world musically, in a sense, traveling even farther than Genghis Khan to bring their music to the farthest corners -- and they want to bring peace and unity and religious tolerance. So, perhaps, it doesn't really matter so much what the historical Genghis Khan really was like. Perhaps it's more important what these intriguing images mean.
And, perhaps, The HU is going to help this Quixotic Quest.
BTW if you read my blogs, you should know that I edit them from time to time. If you come back later, it might not be exactly the same.
I joined Twitter because of him. I think it was 2010. I was a Grobanite. Josh was on Twitter. He didn't have that many followers. He tweeted me fairly often. I don't remember how often. Maybe it was more than twenty?
I came to see that he was a voracious speed reader. He sometimes spied on us talking about him.
We knew he tended to come in at midnight California time, so we would hang around on Twitter then, because we knew he'd be more likely to see our responses if we responded right away. We chatted while waiting. He was likely listening.
There was a group called Groban Tweeters, or something like that. I got added to it. Some of us suspected that he started the group to monitor is.
He was funny. There was at least one article recommending following him for the humor.
He did vlogs where he talked to us. He seemed like a regular guy.
I came to think of him as almost a friend. I tweeted him a lot more often than he tweeted me. I sent him links to stuff that I thought would interest
Over time he got a lot more followers. He stopped tweeting me.
Still he often live tweeted major events, like major TV shows.
I didn't stop tweeting him. It was a habit. I thought of it as a conversation. He didn't always answer, but I knew he was paying attention. Or, if he wasn't paying attention, his manager was, but usually it was him.
Then he experimented with leaving Twitter. I suspected he would be back. I was pretty sure he was just as addicted as we were. He came back.
I suspected also that those days when he put out a lot of funny tweets that he was blowing off steam after a fight with a girlfriend.
But he kept tweeting that Twitter was making him miserable and his therapist wanted him to stop.
Now he says he's leaving again.
I get it. Twitter is a rough place. People are often unkind.
But if he's not there, should I still follow him? Should I still tweet him? Should I be on Twitter at all? (Well I've got two other Twitter id's for other purposes.
I did adopt my #QuixoticQuest as part of my Twitter identity. That was supposed to be my mission here other than the vapid desire to commune with a singer I was obsessed with.
I'm feeling frustrated with the #QuixoticQuest now, though. It was inspired my Michael Jackson and now everyone thinks he was a pedophile. I blogged about that recently. I'm undecided as to whether I believe the allegations, but they predominate the public consciousness about Michael Jackson.
Also I'm not sure a single world anthem is necessarily the solution now. Maybe the sharing of music that's going on on YouTube is sufficient.
Tho a world anthem might still serve a purpose.
I've found others to communicate with on Twitter. I've met other fans. I've communicated with other performers. But of my first reason for being there is gone, should I just turn around and leave. Should I unfollow him?
I've certainly had my complaints about him over the years. I consider myself more of a #glambert than a #grobanite now.
At least one fan thinks his ambivalent attitude towards fans on Twitter is such a turnoff that she thinks he should be unfollowed.
I don't know. Maybe I'm part of why he's miserable. Maybe I should unfollow him?
So many of my friends have jumped on the "Leaving Neverland" bandwagon. They think MJ was a child molester.
I can't say for certain that he wasn't. I wasn't there.
On the other hand, I've seen so many bizarre lies made up about him, like that his children were fathered by his dermatologist or a white actor -- and that they're white, when: they're clearly light-skinned African Americans, Prince has inherited MJ's vitiligo, and Paris looks like MJ's twin.
Moreover, in my own family, I've seen that my ex had false memories of abuse, possibly implanted by a therapist, which seems to me likely to have happened to these two guys, if they weren't outright lying. I've seen transcripts of psychologists suggesting to former child friends of MJ that merely sleeping in his bed was sexual molestation.
In fact, he grew up, until he was 10 in a 2 bedroom home with 8 siblings and two parents. He had 26 cousins nearby. He would have had a very different concept of sharing sleeping quarters than most Americans. He saw nothing wrong with what he was doing and couldn't understand what everyone else thought was wrong with it.
I do suspect that he had an autism spectrum disorder. He didn't understand what kind of impression he was creating.
But I've based this whole Quixotic Quest on MJ's idea that singing together could bring or at least promote world peace. With so many people believing that MJ was a child molester, it's hard to continue this #QuixoticQuest without completely re-writing all my blogs about it.
I really thought that this was a divinely inspired calling, but I'm not sure where to go with it.
Of course, over time, my feeling about how this quest should work has evolved. I used to think it had to be a single song, sung all at the same time. Now I'm thinking that the way YouTube works, with so many people exchanging music, might be a better model. I also think that, perhaps, just having common cultural observances of any kind could be useful to help us feel like one people.
But, ultimately, the idea that this quest was inspired by MJ isn't going to be an easy sell right about now.
